2/14 WWT: Maximizing your content ROI with Spheres of Content

Okay, Fab

So we're going to make a slow start, a little bit of introductions

and then we will get into our topic of conversation today. So today we're going to be discussing maximizing your content ROI with spheres of content

So ensuring essentially that you get the most potential return from. your investment, your time, your money, your effort, from your content as possible by

utilizing different content strategies. In terms of raising hands, Harriam, if you could put

your question or your query in the chat slash the Q&A bar and then we can discuss that as we

go along. So quick, a little bit about me while I'm still having other people come in for a little bit

So welcome, if you've not met me before. I'm Matt Lawson. I am a publisher success manager here

I've got over five years in the digital publishing industry, many of which are spent here at Zoic

And I successfully implemented revenue, speed and growth strategies for over 3,000 publishers

whether that is improving their ad setup, implementing different strategies, different ways for them to cover their content

or how they can optimize their theme, their plugins, and their general strategy

I've also spoken at industry events such as SODP, if you have checked into that before

The current focus at Zoic is helping people with CoreF vitals, as there has been a shift recently with Google changing some of those goalposts

as well as Google core update recovery strategies. We still see a lot of people that really got hit hard

by the series of core updates in last year. So that's beginning to really bog a lot of sites down

and make some publishers think twice about creating more content. So we're trying to help them get back on their feet

Also, aside from digital publishing, I own an adorable dash and puppy called Daisy

She is six months old. There she is in the bottom left. when she is not causing absolute havoc

So she is absolutely adorable. Right. We're going to be getting into the main content now

Again, if you do join halfway through or you've only just caught this now

the full thing will be available online for you. Now, the aim of the session today

is really to improve your content strategy. So you're looking at your end-to-end content creation pipeline

and looking at ways to improve your efficiency overall. We don't often get a chance to do this as webmasters because we're in the weeds, creating content, just trying to get it out, trying to make sure we have enough time in the day to hit our quota of how many articles we want to generate

That means that we don't tend to have a top-down look at how to make that whole process easier and have the result be better quality

So this gives us all an opportunity to do that with our sites. Now, over time, even the most experienced webmasters find themselves using more restrictive

strategies, just sticking to what they know and just doing it by the book, which reduces

the success of long-term content and it causes stagnation. This means that you've not given the articles that might be great quality enough support

or you don't quite have a direction in which you are creating your articles

You're just trying to put anything out there. So today's session will focus on a really

simplified content creation strategy that will help you to maximize your ROI or return

on investment in both the time and the money spent. So that way, the time you dedicate to your

site will be as valuable as possible. This is the content creation pipeline we're going to chat

about today. We're going to chat about each of these fields, improving topic choice, creating

a sphere, and then efficient creation. So we'll be chatting about each of those and if you have

question about each of those I'll also stop to answer any questions within that field

Now in terms of improving your topic choice I think there are a lot of options available at the moment You know if you just Google keyword suggestion keyword tool keyword planner

there are hundreds of options. There's lots of tools out there. Some of them are more efficient than others

Some will allow you to see more suggestions or more tailored suggestions

Others will be a paid tool that may allow you to see more insights

but you'll have to pay either a one-off or a subscription fee. use that. This ends up causing a little bit of a, you know, do you want a paid tool that actually

gives you what you need, or do you settle for something that's free that doesn't quite give you

as much as you kind of want to really hit the topics that are going to make your site grow faster

Now, that does leave a lot of webmasters in a difficult position, but the question remains

do you actually need to make that choice? There are a few that are good quality free

tools but not many things like Semrush have fantastic content but do hide that

behind the paywall. Using topics within niche IQ this is a tool I think is

absolutely awesome not gonna lie and it really allows you to have that same

granularity and the consistency as if you are using a paid high-quality tool

within your dashboard for free. So you can see the exact topics

that are relevant to your site specifically, you can see the search volume, and you can see the

keyword difficulty, which overall will give you a potential ranking. This is trying to balance

how many people are searching for it versus if you can actually rank for it in the first place

After all, there is not much point creating a topic that is really, really searched for if you're

not going to get even in the top three or four pages, because you won't really get a return for it

And likewise, if you find the topic that you can rank for number one easily

but only five people search for it a year, there isn't much point. So trying to find that sweet spot is always the most important aspect with keyword research

and this tool does it for you so that you can focus on making the content itself

Honestly, I think this is incredibly powerful, and it allows you to take a lot of the time away from market research

that you usually would have to when going between these different keyword generating tools

and trying to decide if they're relevant to your site. You can also bookmark them and you can also mark them as completed

so you can use it as a sheet to work through once you know which ones you would like to cover on your site

And the rest will be updated in time to make sure that they're constantly relevant to you

If you've not checked this out already, I would definitely recommend checking this out because it is just such an easy way to get those topics out there

Now, that is improving topic choice. Does anybody have any questions about how the topics works

or about keyword choice in general? Now would be the time to let me know

either with the chat function or with the Q&A if you want to ask a more direct question

that might have some sensitive information in it. Fab. Well, I'm going to move on. If you do have any questions, I will come back to them in a second

The second thing we're going to discuss is creating what's called a sphere, or a sphere of content

This is a quite recently used term, and it really discusses how you are able to create one article as really a main selling

point off your site and make it much more valuable than it usually would be as just a loan product

So first, we could use that keyword that we discussed from the topic section to create a good

quality article manually, writing it yourself or hiring a writer to do so, and ensuring that you're

incorporating those E-EAT principles. If you're not aware of what those are, I would recommend looking

those up. They are experience, expertise, authoritiveness, and trustworthiness, essentially ensuring that you have conveyed to the audience that you know what you're

talking about and why they should trust and believe in what you saying Once you created that then it really about thinking how can I make the most of this high article that been created in a potential keyword that could have a good return for me

The answer to that is to create a sphere with many branching options or branching articles

We can capitalize on the higher volume of traffic heading to this main article by creating

creating additional relevant articles to the main topic. Those can then be linked back throughout

which will increase your internal linking, and it will lead to increased impressions overall

So if you have an article about, let's say, baking or cupcakes

then you can think about all the different aspects that go into cooking, whether they are evergreen

or they will never go out of fashion or style, or whether they are a trend that is relevant

that you can produce these articles, that could be related to your main one for

Implementing this structure is great for increasing the value of the main article

because these visitors that visit our first article may then go to the second

or the third or the fourth, which increases the amount of impressions that you will receive

and therefore the revenue you're generating. It also means that the visitors are staying on the site for longer

and may find more relevant content elsewhere on the site. So you're more likely to build a loyal visitor over time

I do see we have one chat, which is my website is not showing the ZOIC ads

For this question, I would recommend going to support. We're currently doing a webinar specifically on content strategy rather than technical support issues

But if you just message support.Zeric.com, they'd be more than happy to help with specific instances such as this

So, that was creating a sphere. So far, we have discovered the keyword that we want to use by looking at a mix of the value of keywords and also how much traction it's getting

And we've also worked out how to create an article that has branching paths like a sphere or a wheel that can then lead to increased impressions and increased traffic generation

Now, it's really about how we should create those relevant articles, because it seems like it's a lot more work than just creating one

Now, the best way to create content, and I am sure you've heard it this time and time again, is utilizing AI-assisted content creation

Because it's a powerful tool. A lot of people are using it, and there's a reason why

It allows you to create a vast content library with relative ease compared to previous

years, and it allows you to create those relevant articles as part of that sphere structure

So you could, if you would like to, use AI to generate those relevant articles and edit them

yourself and add in your own spin and your own voice, but it allows you to create those relevant

articles without the time investment as if you were doing it from scratch

However, the important aspect here is that AI still needs crucial direction and structure

in order to successfully create an article that does not need completely rewriting

So using a language model such as chat GPT may help, but it can also end up leading to a lot of time editing rather than creating

This is always the challenge when using AI, so you've got to be careful with which AI writing model you decide to use

as well as how much time you're spending changing and editing the AI content

Thankfully, also within your Nice IQ dashboard, you have something called Wordsmith

and it follows a three-step fetch, fluff, and finish strategy that allows you to really efficiently create the articles that you would like to

So first, fetch allows you to have a skeleton of your article

by inputting a title, subheadings and brief details that you'd like to cover

For example, if we use our chat before about cupcakes and a cupcake article

you could say, write an article giving me a recipe for chocolate chip cupcakes

in a conversational and friendly style Subheading one cupcake recipe subheading two why cupcakes are so popular subheading three easy mistakes to make This way you have a skeleton for the article that your

main AI tool can then use to flesh out. This article can then be created in HTML just to be

imported easily into your favorite CMS and it can be advertised easily across your social media

network. This is a pretty simple but really, really effective content creation

pipeline because at the end of the day, once you're finished with these three steps, what you've actually done is turned a trending high value keyword into an

article that's going to get a lot of clicks and traction. You've then created

relevant side articles that can be linked back to provide internal linking and

additional impressions, and you've also ensured that those relevant articles are able to be created

longer term, and you actually have the time to implement this as a content strategy plan

rather than just something that you try for a day or for a week. Is Sphere similar to a silo strategy

So it can be similar in some ways, and a silo is very much about trying to create

content in one, so a very large vertical where you try to cover everything within a specific

topic and really go, right, I'm going to cover, let's say if it's travel and we talk about

one particular destination and we really tunnel into everything within that destination

The spheres may potentially go into relevant side content or side tangents that could still

have a crossover with the main content. which is why it's almost like a Venn diagram once you start to create those additional relevant articles

So to answer your question, it can be slightly less relevant than a strict silo strategy

but does involve creating those spheres for every main article so that you have that surrounding

rather than a lot of different articles being firmly within the same plan

Now the key takeaway here is that change your content strategy can be essential for growing traffic

We have seen a lot of websites really, really struggle after the helpful content update

and after the updates towards the end of last year as well with regaining their traffic

and their position in their rankings. And part of that needs to be about thinking how you are creating your articles, what is your

content strategy plan, and how can you speed it up whilst not

reducing the quality. So these three steps are a great way to take a different approach to maybe

what you did in 2023 and seeing if speeding up the process whilst also improving the end result

can result in a more engaged visitor base that will come back for more and generate more revenue for you

I know this is something that is potentially a more long-term goal. People often just think about

how do I make more money now. But I would honestly recommend getting started with this as soon as possible because these long-term plans can still

have short-term results. It can help you get the articles you are considering creating out

faster this week whilst also helping you with your end-of-year goals. So make sure you are getting

full value out of this session by either jotting it down or by straight after this session

heading into niche IQ and bookmarking three to five keywords within that topics tool that you think

you could cover. Then, ensure that somebody else is checking on you or keep yourself accountable

with reminders that you've created at least one fully developed sphere of content by the end of

this week and just see how it performs. This might not be the content creation strategy for everyone

but we have seen a lot of success with publishers that are implementing this strategy

and it's so simple and so easy that there is no reason not to give it a go. So try and take a look

within the niche IQ topics tool. Find three of those keywords that you're going to create articles on

and then find relevant articles that you'll use Wordsmith to generate